Bang Kaphi TAO, Lopburi (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบางกะพี้) renamed to Bang Kaphi Dong Phlap (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบางกะพี้ดงพลับ) [Gazette]. In 2004, the TAO Bang Kaphi and the TAO Dong Phlap were merged, however the enlarged TAO kept the name of its major part. Now both subdistricts covered are represented in the name.

Ko Loi TAO, Chonburi (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลเกาะลอย) renamed to Ko Loi Bang Hak (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลเกาะลอยบางหัก) [Gazette]. In 2004, the TAO Ko Loi and the subdistrict council Bang Hak were merged, however the enlarged TAO kept the name of its major part. Now both subdistricts covered are represented in the name.

All three name changes will take effect on September 4, and it seems they were done without discussion in the board to consider name changes - at least no meeting reference is mentioned in the announcements.

Even though the changes are not in effect yet, I have already updated the corresponding Wikipedia articles, and also created the Wikidata items for these three local governments with all their data.

Of these, the plan to create a province Bua Yai by splitting off parts of Nakhon Ratchasima is nothing new, that province even already has a Wikipedia article and I had mentioned it here before when that plan reemerged in 2013. Also, the province Chum Phae is not new, I first read about it in about 2005, but never heard any update on that since then, so it seems to be shelved and forgotten - probably its save to remove its mention in the Wikipedia article on Khon Kaen. Interestingly, according to this list it would even be composed of districts from two provinces, so far all newly created provinces were split off from just one province.

The other alleged provinces listed I have never heard about, so these might have been from some small local advocate groups but never made it into any official channels. For example, the Kantharalak province is supposed to contain the minor districts which don't exist yet, and in fact since 2007 any newly created districts are supposed to become full districts directly and omit the minor district level.

It would be much more interesting to know the current status of the one province actually about to be created - Mae Sot to be split off from Tak - or the proposal to create Fang province from the north of Chiang Mai which was to be considered by parliament several years ago.

Monday, August 24, 2015

The census data for 1970 is now completely translated into my XML structure, for all of the publications like the Whole Thailand report I have transcribed table one containing the population and household numbers for each district subdivided by municipal, sanitary districts and non-municipal areas. Of course the publications contain much more data, but that's so much special interest only I have not worked on it at all. Actually, the only other data I have prepared in the XML schema so far is the age distribution, so I might add that later.

Though this XML should be the easiest way to store the data for any further processing by software, the Excel sheets I created as an intermediate step to represent exactly what is visible in the publications are probably more accessible for non-programmers. I collected them all in one archive. I also compiled the downloads from the statistics office into PDF files, however these are around 10 MB each. Due to this, as well as to avoid copyright problems, there's no download link for these, but if you need one or many you can simply ask me by email.

Working through the tables was rather straightforward, there was only one district which was missing - Na Haeo in Loei is not in the list though was created in February 1970 as a minor district, thus before the reference date of April 1st 1970. In a few cases, the type - minor district (King Amphoe, กิ่งอำเภอ) or full district (Amphoe, อำเภอ) - was wrong, but there were also a few where I had mistakes about the actual dates in my data and only spotted them when looking more closely now.

The only cases where the actual numbers are inconsistent are for two province.

Surin - the household numbers for private and collective households are wrong by one for sanitary and the nonmunicipal areas.

Thonburi - the total population according to the publication on Thonburi was 920,033, whereas the publication on the whole kingdom lists 920,058 - seven women and 18 men more. Also, the sum of the numbers for the districts also return the value of 920,033, so these two documents contradict.

I have also already finished the data for 1960, and I am currently working on 1980 - which however will take much longer than the previous two census as there are both more districts as well as the data is more detailed. I am also continuously updating my spreadsheet with the total population numbers for each district.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Last month, the Department of Provincial Administration issued a new version of the geocodes based on the TIS 1099 standard - or actually other way round, the list on which the TIS 1099 standard was based. This time they changed to publish Excel sheets instead of plain text files, making it a bit easier for normal users to use these lists, but for me to look for the changes it adds a little extra work to convert to the old format. Sadly, the meta data or version history of the Excel files don't show any internal information on the way these lists are compiled...

Sadly, the planned new districts in Yala did not receive a code yet with this update, so if they become official before another update of this list I have a 50% chance of guessing the right codes to use in my XML file for Yala - in fact I have already made my guess as I prepared the two entries, so if anyone from DOPA is reading - please choose 9509 for Lam Mai and 9510 for Kota Baru.

A few more changes are in the rcode list which contains all the registration offices and thus both district and municipalities. While the districts are of course the same as in the ccaatt list, this time nine municipalities received a new four digit code.

There are still a lot of municipalities which did not receive a four digit code yet - and it is simply impossible that all can receive such a code as there are provinces which have more districts and municipalities than fit into the 99 possible codes. Thus to assign a unique code to every municipality the code scheme has to be changed.

The code 1681 was in past ccaatt lists used with the name "อ.บ้านเช่า จ.ลพบุรี" (Ban Chao district, Lopburi province), but marked as obsolete. It is both a strange code for a district, as well I am not aware of any district with that name ever planned in Lopburi. Interestingly, the district Ban Mi was named Ban Sao (บ้านเซ่า) from 1917 till 1939, so it might even be a misspelled obsolete geocode entry. But now it has been overwritten by Kok Ko.

Changwat, Amphoe, Tambon

Everything about the administrative subdivisions of Thailand - history, current news, facts hardly found in English, reviews of corresponding books, the Wikipedia coverage of these entities...

Feedback of all kind is very welcome, either by public comments at the corresponding posting, or also by private email. Comments only posted to spam or containing anything which might give me legal problems in Thailand will be deleted.